


Cabin Fever

by wreathed



Category: British Comedy RPF, Just Puddings (Web Series), Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster (Podcast)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, New York City, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Sharing a Bed, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 12:34:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18052592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: From the prompt: James Acaster/Ed Gamble, stuck in New York shenanigans.





	Cabin Fever

They’d trudged through the snow and the dark, John still fiercely hungover and Ed still deeply unsympathetic, Google Maps difficult to decipher due to their bulky clothes and the stupid weather, until they at last reached the tiny apartment Ed had magically managed to find the four of them. He really hadn’t been given enough credit.

“Cannot fucking believe,” Ed says, loud enough for John and Lloyd to hear him from the next room. “That two of my so-called friends have stolen the bedroom with the two actual beds even though _I_ was the one who sorted us all out a place to stay.”

Only silence greets him in response. Maybe they’re passed out already. The idiots. The bastards.

“Well,” James says sleepily, strangely nevertheless determined to be upbeat. “It might be a sofa bed, but at least you’ll get a double. Where’s the last one?”

“What? No, there is no… this is it,” Ed sighs, gesturing at the innocuous sofa bed, currently set to sofa mode.

James, slightly disappointingly, does not look like his entire world has tipped upside down at this information.

“I just searched for somewhere for four people,” Ed says. “Everywhere’s full of stranded travellers – it’s not like there was a ton of choice. We can top and tail.”

Ed looks across at James. He’s still wearing his stupid bobble hat. He looks tired, and it makes the skin under his eyes look pale and thin.

If there are any feelings that come bubbling up at the sight, Ed quashes them.

“Fine,” James says mildly. “It’s quite cold in here, so I’ll want to sleep in lots of clothes until it warms up.”

“If you sleep in that hat, I’ll scream. Help me fold the bed out,” Ed says, trying not to think about the situation too much. He’s tired; it’s cold. He’s relieved they have four walls and a roof. He wants to go to sleep.

“What about _just_ the hat?”

Ed rolls his eyes, but he also coughs.

“Don’t be stupid.”

*

A few hours later, Ed wakes up with a start. The wind is screaming past the windows. His feet are freezing, poking out of the covers. He still has in his head the remnants of a dream about the metal gig that hadn’t quite make sense: a crowd, sweat, the smell of spilled beer, but the floor had decided to smoothly shift under their feet like sand and he could see the moon when he looked up at the ceiling.

James had been alternating between shouting along under duress and fiddling with his earplugs. Sometimes parts of their bodies touched. Occasionally, a large, muscled man with a bizarre grab-bag of facial hair had grimaced sceptically at James’s over-utilisation of corduroy.

On further consideration, barring the sand and the moon, a surprising amount of it had been a faithful recreation of events.

He kicks James in the head (gently) (ish).

“Oi!” He’d been sleeping on his front, so the sound’s muffled by the pillow.

“Just thinking about the gig last night. You were adorable,” Ed says, somehow managing to sound both fond and sardonic at the same time.

“I was _not_ ,” James says, around a heavy sigh. “It was too loud and I got a bruise on my hipbone.”

In the silence of the room, Ed feels his mind go fuzzy and heat unfurl somewhere in the region of his navel as he thought about what that bruise would look like, about _touching_ it. What the hell was happening to him?

“This is ridiculous,” James says irritably. “And your feet are disgusting. Sleep the right way.”

Ed kicks him in the head once more for good measure, takes a deep breath and manages to shuffle himself around so he’s lying with his head next to James’s in a way that means he doesn’t leave the warmth of the duvet for too long. There’s an ominous creak from the fold-out bedframe.

James is sleeping in trousers, socks and a t-shirt, which must be madly uncomfortable. Ed, who is only in boxers, in this position feels over-exposed. The semi he’s had at least since thinking about the errant hipbone bruise (if not before) feels impertinent but also pretty maddening, because there’s nothing he can do about it whatsoever.

“Thank you. G’night,” James says, with a tone of determined finality.

It’s not a very big bed. They feel worryingly close, like different kinds of cutlery together in a drawer. 

“You’ve thrown me off, waking me up at this hour,” James mutters distractedly after a few minutes, shifting his body frustratedly against the mattress before abruptly aborting the movement. Ed, who for non-specific but important reasons had been closely watching James’s face, sees a blush rise despite the coldness of the room, and after a single nervous swallow makes an empathetic guess.

“What were _you_ dreaming about?” Ed asks in a low voice, and James’s blush deepens, sending a further rush of blood down to Ed’s cock. Ed fervently hopes James is distracted by his own problem and doesn’t notice.

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know,” James says, and it’s not really an answer.

“Hey,” Ed says, imagining he’ll make some sort of joke, laugh it off, but then he puts his hand on James’s surprisingly warm shoulder and James moves so he’s lying on his side and Ed sees, with a ridiculous jump of excitement, the outline of James’s erection in his trousers.

What they should do in this moment, Ed supposes, heart hammering in his chest as they stare at each other (James is breathing in and out very hard, his hair sleepy-stuck-up on one side), is kiss, or perhaps have some sort of mature conversation, but instead he takes his other hand and he feeds James two slightly curved fingers and James momentarily shoots him a look of incredulity but promptly ruins it by making this _noise_ , the same sort of noise he makes when eating something sugary two feet from Ed and his notepad. It drives Ed absolutely insane.

“ _Fuck_ ,” says Ed very quietly. It’s not his greatest ever rejoinder. 

“Fuck,” James replies still with his mouth full, almost sounding like he’s annoyed. Then he sucks on Ed’s fingers, his mouth all pert and tight, and – well, Ed’s madly hard and only wearing boxers so it’s not exactly an ambiguous situation, is it – Ed takes his fingers out and kisses him.

“So many— why do you have so many clothes, you fucking repressed—”

“Please don’t look at my weird knees,” mumbles James with his eyes closed, but he doesn’t look appalled at all, he looks _gone_.

“—Seriously, do I look like right now I give a fuck about your fucking _knees_ —”

He shoves James’s trousers and underwear down, not quite down to his knees in case that actually matters to him, and moves to what seems to be the best distraction technique presently available.

James’s reaction to Ed’s lips around his cock is gratifyingly fricative and nonsensical. The sofa bed gives an almighty loud creak, and that (disappointingly) prompts James to bite down on his own lip and keep quiet.

Ed concentrates on the feeling, full in his mouth; he wants to be good at this, he wants to make James feel good. Perhaps that will mean James won’t notice how much this is turning him on. 

James moans, muffled under his own hand, and Ed slides off because he wants— he wants to look at James again when he’s like this.

“You know you look good,” James huffs, almost as if there’s been no break in their earlier conversation, head propped up on the pillow and looking down at where Ed’s between his legs. “Jawline-wise, etcetera. So don’t try and—”

“I don’t, actually, so if you could let me know that, say, once every three minutes or so that would really boost my self-esteem.”

James looks as if he heroically just about resists an eye roll. “Anyway, not that this isn’t… unexpected, but good—”

“What do you normally expect from blowjobs,” Ed asks listlessly. James ignores him “What would you give this, say, out of ten—”

“But, your fingers; I—”

“Oh?” Ed says, and he can’t stop himself from grinning. “This isn’t enough for you. Do you want it? Do you want to take it?”

“I need it,” James says in a tiny voice, and that makes Ed want to grab him and sink right into him and never leave in a way that he doesn’t care to examine more closely. 

Instead, he finds James’s hipbone bruise, kisses it, then bites James at the crease of his inner thigh, and that makes James jerk and then shoot Ed a murderous glance but, there’s no denying it, his eyes have gone all unfocussed and there’s a flush high on his cheeks.

Pushing James’s clothes off him altogether, exposing him further to the cold of the room that they’re aiming to ignore, he spits against James’s hole and slides one finger gently in, listening to the addictive wheeze of James’s breath. He wants to, he realises with heat and dread, hear that again. He adds a second finger, and watches James’s face react, red and scrunched-up, his mouth open and silent.

Then Ed goes back to sucking James as well, arm thrown over the line of James’s hips because it’s the only thing that’ll stop him from arching up and making the bed creak even more, and it’s not long before James makes a truncated cry and comes hotly in Ed’s mouth. Ed, surprised, splutters and slips off, watching dazedly the remainder of James’s come falls across his belly.

Ed doesn’t want to wait for it (he doesn’t want to give himself over, he doesn’t want to risk James saying _no_ ) so he sits up on his knees, eyes on James again, takes his aching cock out of his boxers and wanks until he comes. His come stripes itself beside James’s, dirtying his stomach in a way that gives Ed a final filthy thrill of satisfaction. 

The resulting silence in the room is near-unbearable. James looks close to sleep again, his eyes half-closed.

In the end, Ed makes to go to the bathroom. Maybe he’ll considerately grab some tissues.

“It’s too cold to get up,” James mumbles tiredly, half-heartedly grabbing at Ed with one arm. “Stay here.”

So they lie close together, all sweaty and disgusting, listening to the wind howl outside.

Distracted enough to not spare a thought for how they’ll be found the next morning.

**Author's Note:**

> John Robins and Lloyd Langford shamelessly sidelined here.
> 
> [My tumblr](http://wreathedwith.tumblr.com/). Message me for my twitter handle and I'll happily chat britcom with you there.


End file.
